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Slowly, but surely

Sometimes when working on a large, complex project, it can be hard to see progress – once certain areas are addressed/stabilized I just start focusing on all of the other problems. In these cases, I find it really helpful to write about the work, to go through the photos I’ve taken so far, and to reflect on how far we’ve come. One of the more complex treatments we’re working on in the Artifact Lab is Tawahibre’s coffin.

The last time you saw Tawahibre on the blog, she was all tied up, Lilliputian-style.

Since that last post, we actually have made quite a bit of progress, and have started realigning and filling areas where the gesso and smaller wood components have cracked and separated from the wood ground below.

One very precarious area has been a large section on the lower proper left side of the coffin – when the coffin came into the lab for treatment, this section was only just barely attached along the top, with the help of two wooden dowels as well. In addition to being just about ready to detach, this section was also very distorted and misaligned, with areas of the painted surface overlapping and abrading each other.

Before treatment detail of this large partially detached section. It was just barely attached along the top (indicated by red arrows) and by 2 wooden dowels (circled in green).

Here is a view of this section, before treatment, from above (the red arrows are just pointing out the area that I’m talking about, for clarity).

After working to humidify and realign this area as much as possible, I prepared it for filling and stabilizing by lining the wood support below and the inside surface of the detached section as possible with Japanese tissue paper, adhered with methyl cellulose adhesive. The Japanese tissue paper will serve to make these fills more easily reversible in the future.

Preparing this section for stabilization and filling. The red arrows are indicating the Japanese tissue paper used to line the inner surfaces of the coffin before filling.

To secure this section to the rest of the coffin, I applied a fill mixture between the large partially detached section and the wood support below. The fill mixture was made using 5% methyl cellulose adhesive in 1:1 water/ethanol bulked with a 1:1 ratio of alpha cellulose and 3M glass microballoons. The alpha cellulose and microballoons were chosen to create a lightweight, relatively dry, and easily moldable fill – they also make this mixture a bright white color. After applying the fill material, this section was again bound with the twill tape and ethafoam blocks to hold everything together while the fill dried.

Detail of this section after filling.

And here is a detail showing this section from above – I think it makes a nice comparison with the before treatment shot from a similar angle, above.

So far this has been a successful course of treatment and we have filled several areas on the coffin. Our current goal is to get the lid stabilized enough so that we can separate it from the base, so that we can continue to work on both sections with better access to some of the very unstable, fragile areas.

Special thanks to my conservation colleagues for their help with brainstorming, problem-solving, and carrying out this treatment!